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An anonymous reader writes "An indie-produced item-shop-sim-slash-RPG, Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale, has been localized and a demo released by the equally indie startup Carpe Fulgur LLC. The game is equal parts item shop sim (as in, item shop like the kind you find in every RPG ever, except you're behind the counter now) with certain Zelda- or Diablo-esque elements also present in the form of randomly-generated dungeons that you can grab an adventurer friend to go tromping through for loot to sell. The response so far has been pretty positive and it seems like Carpe Fulgur is trying to make a business of taking (non-pornographic) unique indie titles from Japan and getting them into a state where the rest of the world can enjoy them."

The porn games that get localised aren't indie - not in the way that this game is - they're available at normal games shops / electronics shops rather than in specialist indie games/comics shops or at events.
There are a bunch of indie porn games too, but they're almost all parodies of established properties, so could never get released overseas

Makes a lot of sense, actually - after all, from many hack'n'slash games, it seems like you're already the one keeping local economy going.

Or, more realistically, the one trashing it. Dumping 5x the town's GDP into the local economy all at once, just from all the gold you loot off monsters in those dungeons, would trash the economy. Then again, what is that Uber Sword of Smiting doing in the shopkeep's inventory, in the middle of rural farm country?

Looking at the amounts (also diversity - each time you talk to them, there's something different) of gear in posession of local merchants, and the margins they keep (just compare the values when selling and buying), it seems more like you're just their productive labourer;p

I always tried playing NetHack the way that I played Rogue when I was a kid. It never worked. Not that I ever beat Rogue, either, but I had a few good runs at it. Unfortunately, I can't quite figure out what the "right" way to play NetHack is because I always end up dying in the first 10 levels of the dungeon. Starvation plagues me and this whole idea of training my pet to steal from item shops confuses me even after reading guides on how to do it.

Starvation plagues me and this whole idea of training my pet to steal from item shops confuses me even after reading guides on how to do it.

Try playing barbarians, they can eat almost anything.

Training your pet to steal from item shops is a magical part of the game, at least until you become powerful enough to kill shopkeepers, and then you can only do that as a chaotic alignment or there are repercussions. The trick is to throw something that they will eat at them as quickly as possible after they drop an item in an adjacent square. So you need some tripe or whatever, and you stand in the doorway hitting the . key (or the s key, I usually sear

Starvation is a problem in the game unless you MOVE MOVE MOVE. Keep moving and eat every corpse you create. Make a note of which corpses poison, sicken, or kill you, and avoid eating those your next game. You have to move down the stairs after fully exploring the level. Starvation is the game's way of keeping you from spending too much unproductive time in one spot.

I'm currently developing a game where you play as one of the WoW quest givers. All day, every day, you'll sit around with an exclamation point over your head asking every random stranger who comes along to get you 10 wolf pelts. It'll be the most exciting game since Penn & Teller's "Desert Bus."

Does Recettear feature any form of copy protection?Recettear does not feature copy protection (or "DRM") of any kind. Neither Carpe Fulgur nor EasyGameStation believe in compromising the user's privacy and freedom to use their computers as they wish.

But doesn't that mean I can just pirate your game?orBut aren't you afraid of getting pirated into oblivion?Well, we'll say this: Recettear would be pirated regardless of whether we used copy protection or not. We're adults and we understand that our work will be stolen by someone who doesn't want to pay for it; that's how the Internet works in this day and age. Any prospective pirates who enjoy our work, however, must realize that we can only continue to produce localizations for games - and possibly help foster new projects on our own - if we make enough money to make a living at it.

If you like the game even a little bit, please purchase it. We respect our customers enough to not put any invasive DRM programs into Recettear - we hope the respect will be repaid in kind.